Part one ended with a number I did not trust: $10,786 in projected monthly recurring revenue, generated almost overnight by people using a two-month free trial.It also ended with a question.Where did all these people come from?Two days later, Aveiro has passed 2,500 users and $20,000 in projected MRR. The revenue is still projected, not realized. We do not know how many of these users will remain when the trial ends.But now we know what happened.
The answer arrived in a reply
After restoring the accounts and sending a service announcement, I received a response with the first useful lead.
Someone had taken a screenshot of Aveiro's F6S offer, including the two-month free trial code, and shared it across five Telegram channels.That was it.No coordinated attack. No sophisticated growth campaign. No mysterious traffic source hidden in our analytics.One person took a screenshot and put it in front of several communities where people look for free software deals.I was also warned not to become too optimistic. Many people in these channels are simply looking for anything they can claim for free. Their interest may disappear as soon as payment is required.The product data supported that interpretation.Most visitors had not explored the landing page. They did not read the positioning or compare plans. They arrived directly at signup, entered the code and moved as quickly as possible toward the free account.This was not a conventional product launch. Most of these people did not even know what Aveiro was supposed to be.
They still used it
The lack of purchase intent does not make the users fake.They created sites. They generated pages. They changed layouts. They consumed AI credits. They encountered errors and contacted us through the in-app chat.
Some clearly expected Aveiro's AI assistant to behave like a general-purpose site builder. That is not what we originally built. Aveiro is a publishing platform designed to keep websites, newsletters, media and social distribution connected.
But the mismatch itself became valuable information.
For months, I had struggled to get enough people into the product to see where its explanation failed. I offered long free subscriptions. I asked people personally. I launched, posted and tried to manufacture attention one small piece at a time.
Now thousands of people were using Aveiro without any prior context.
That is a brutal onboarding test, but it is also an unusually honest one.
The infrastructure survived
Apart from banning the first several hundred users, the system handled the surge better than I expected.
The application remained available. Infrastructure costs increased, but did not explode. Users could reach us through the in-app support channel. Error tracking showed us where the platform was failing, and product metrics showed us where people misunderstood it.
Those systems are not exciting when everything is quiet. Under real load, they become the difference between vague panic and something you can actually investigate.
The surge revealed technical problems, but it did not collapse the ecosystem.
That matters because Aveiro is bootstrapped. We cannot absorb unlimited usage, and we cannot treat infrastructure cost as an abstract future concern. Every free account consumes real resources.
Accepting this wave of users is a bet that we can create more value for them than serving them will cost us.
Thousands of users changed the roadmap in days
We have already changed a lot based on what happened.
We improved onboarding so the purpose of the platform is clearer before someone reaches an empty workspace.
We simplified site creation and adjusted the default design options so a new project begins from a more useful state.
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We started producing educational content focused on what Aveiro is for, what it is not for, and how someone can use it as a connected publishing system rather than another isolated AI generator.
None of these changes came from a hypothetical persona or a tidy internal workshop.
They came from watching thousands of people misunderstand, test and occasionally break the real product.
This does not mean all of them will become customers. Most probably will not. A free trial distributed through deal channels is not the same thing as qualified demand.
But even if the conversion rate is low, the learning is real.
Projected MRR is not revenue
The number in Stripe now exceeds $20,000 in projected monthly recurring revenue.
It is emotionally difficult not to look at that number and start imagining what it would mean. But it is not money in the bank. These users are on free trials, many arrived without serious purchasing intent, and the subscriptions I cancelled during the incident will not automatically renew.
The number represents a possibility, not an outcome.
The actual test begins now.
Can we teach people why Aveiro exists? Can we help them create something worth maintaining? Can we provide enough value that some of them choose to stay when free becomes paid?
Growth is rarely linear or clean. Sometimes it arrives from the wrong direction. Sometimes it exposes your mistakes before it validates your ideas. Sometimes you have to subsidize usage and accept uncertainty because the opportunity to learn is worth the risk.
Five years versus five minutes
The most ironic part is still the marketing.
I have spent roughly five years building products, publishing updates, launching on platforms and trying to earn attention. Much of that work was met with silence.
I have offered people one-year subscriptions just to try something I built. Many never activated them.
Then a random person took a screenshot, posted it in a few Telegram channels, and did more measurable marketing for Aveiro in five minutes than I had managed through hundreds of accumulated hours.
I do not know whether this moment will turn into a sustainable business result.
Today, I mostly feel tired, overwhelmed and satisfied at the same time.
We built something that is now being used by thousands of real people. The system survived. The feedback is changing the product. And for the first time, we do not have to beg people to test it.
If this somehow turns into $20,000 in actual MRR, I am going to find the person who posted that screenshot and hire him.
